Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
April 12th, 2012 | 
Author: Story By: Tell Me More
With Rick Santorum out of the presidential race, Mitt Romney is focusing his energy on the general election. Early polls show Romney trailing President Obama, partly due to his deficit with women and Latinos. Guest host Viviana Hurtado speaks with National Review contributor Mario Loyola and Janice Crouse of Concerned Women for America.
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Editor’s note: Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a CNN.com contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist.
1. Can we in the media really keep referring to Romney as the GOP “frontrunner,” given that — while he still leads in delegates — he can’t seem to win decisive victories in a region of the country that is critical to Republicans’ success in the general election: the South?
Romney’s defenders will cite his victories in Virginia and Florida. But in Virginia, neither Santorum nor Gingrich were on the ballot and Romney still managed to give up more than 40 percent of the vote to his only challenger: Ron Paul.
Florida is heavily populated by retirees from the Northeast. In 2008, GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Guiliani’s entire campaign strategy consisted of waiting around for the Florida primary, partly in the hopes that retired New Yorkers would carry him over the finished line. That didn’t work out for Guiliani but it wasn’t because he was wrong about who lives in Florida.
Let’s remember that Romney has been criticized by some in his party as not sufficiently conservative and who, as governor of liberal Massachusetts, had to learn to “speak Democrat” to get things done. In a curious twist, he does well in those parts of the country that we can expect will go into the Democratic column on election night.
For Republicans, states like Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire are lost causes. And yet, Romney does poorly in the South, which — with perhaps the exception of Louisiana — tends to be painted red on election night. How is that good news for Republicans if Romney is the nominee?
2. Is it possible that a Republican can be elected president without carrying the South?
It’s hard to see how. If the Republican nominee — no matter who it is — were to write off the Southern states, he would need to be assured of victories in other states that could offset those losses. Most of the rest of the country is already spoken for, divided up between Democrats and Republicans.
The South is the anchor of any Republican presidential campaign. If the GOP loses one or two key Southern states that it is accustomed to winning in the general election, it’ll blow its shot at the presidency.
That is why nominating Romney would be a major gamble for the party, whether the Republican establishment sees it or not. They think that Romney is the “safe” choice. Not in the South, he isn’t. If white Republicans aren’t enthusiastic about the party nominee and don’t turn out, but black Democrats do, the election night map could wind up mighty blue south of the Mason-Dixon line.
3. Will President Obama — seeing that Romney, still the likely GOP nominee, is struggling to connect to voters in the South — respond by putting a few Southern states in play, and make a major push to win them in the general election?
It’s the smart move. And Obama, for all his failings as president, is also a smart campaigner. It would mean Democrats would have to spend more than planned on states like Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia in the hopes of turning out enough African-American voters — and given the demographics of the new South, Hispanic voters — to vote for Obama and swing those states to the Democratic column.
If the Democrats just made a serious pitch for Southern states, that simple act would change everything. It would put Republicans on the defensive and force them to spend money to compete in states that they thought were already in the bag.
In politics, if you have a weakness and your opponent detects it, you’re probably in for a pummelling.
Mitt Romney’s weakness is the South. If Republicans disregard this and make him their nominee, a pummelling they will get.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette.
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The move came a month after the White House tried to calm a furor among Roman Catholic bishops and other social conservatives by announcing it would not require church-run hospitals, universities and charities to foot the bill for birth control coverage but instead shift the burden to insurers.
The administration released preliminary regulatory language for an eventual rule that addressed a number of issues, including a yet-to-be-solved problem of religious institutions that provide their own health insurance.
The action’s bearing on birth control and religious freedom places it at the center of incendiary issues that have moved to the forefront of the election campaign for control of the White House and Congress.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which has spearheaded opposition to Obama contraceptives policies, said it would examine the administration’s new proposed language to see if it met its demands.
But conference spokeswoman Sister Mary Ann Walsh chided the administration for releasing the document late on a Friday as Catholic leaders prepared to observe St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday.
The proposal provoked anger from some religious groups.
“This does nothing,” said Michael O’Dea, executive director of the Christus Medicus Foundation, which promotes Christian healthcare. “It’s bogus.”
The Department of Health and Human Services’ notice of rulemaking gave special emphasis to protections for self-insured religious institutions that have been a prime concern for Roman Catholic authorities.
“Our principle is that the religious employer who’s self-insured will not be paying for this coverage, full stop,” an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity told reporters in a conference call.
The notice calls for third-party administrators including insurers to handle contraceptive coverage for self-insured groups.
Costs would be covered through a range of options unrelated to the employer, including drug rebates, reinsurance credits and multistate insurance plans.
The public will have 90 days to comment on the notice.
SPLIT OPINION
A policy adopted last month requires that most employers provide free coverage for women’s birth control under the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Obama’s signature healthcare overhaul.
Churches and other places of worship are exempt. But the rule now on the books applies to religiously affiliated hospitals, universities, charities and other institutions.
Friday’s action won praise from women’s health advocates and other Obama allies who saw it as reasonable effort to resolve differences with the Catholic clergy.
“The proposal released today make clears that the Obama administration is fulfilling its promise that women will have access to birth control coverage, with no costly co-pays and no additional hurdles, no matter where they work,” Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards said in a statement.
“In my estimation, this definitely moves things forward toward something the American bishops might be more willing to consider,” said Stephen Schneck, a political scientist at The Catholic University of America, who advised Obama on how to reach out to the church.
Friday’s announcement followed weeks of behind-the-scenes meetings between administration officials and stakeholders including Catholic bishops and insurance industry representatives.
There was no word on when proposed regulations might become final. The administration’s current policy does not come into force for religious employers or educators until August 1, 2013.
(Additional reporting by Anna Yukhananov; Editing by Peter Cooney)
Editor’s note: Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a CNN.com contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist.
The storyline involves the contentious issue of affirmative action, which is central to Fisher vs. University of Texas, a case that is scheduled to come before the court this fall. It will cast a spotlight on two of the court’s justices: Sonia Sotomayor and Samuel Alito. Affirmative action seems to be intensely personal to both of them, though for very different reasons.
First, let’s take a minute to note just how similar Alito and Sotomayor are in terms of their background. Both are baby boomers, born just a few years apart. Alito is 61 years old and Sotomayor is 57. They grew up in neighboring states. Alito is from New Jersey and Sotomayor is from New York. Both came from ethnic, working-class families. Alito’s parents were teachers, Sotomayor’s father was a tool-and-die worker and her mother was a telephone operator. Finally, both went to Princeton University and Yale Law School, where both served as editors of the Yale Law Journal.
Given all those similarities, what could these two Supreme Court justices possibly have to argue about? Affirmative action. That’s what.
Will the Supreme Court strike down affirmative action?
Alito has highlighted in a 1985 job application for promotion to officials in the Justice Department of the Reagan administration that he belonged to a group called Concerned Alumni of Princeton. And what were the Princeton alumni so concerned about? Why, that there were supposedly too many women and minorities being admitted to the prestigious but predominantly white institution.
Sotomayor has said that she is a “product of affirmative action” and the “perfect affirmative action baby.” Although she graduated with honors from both Princeton and Yale Law School, she admitted that her test scores “were not comparable” to her classmates at both schools.
Now imagine how these two justices will weigh in on the case of Fisher v. University of Texas.
This is not the first time that the University of Texas at Austin has found itself in the eye of a storm because of its admissions policies.
In the 1990s, Cheryl Hopwood successfully sued the law school at UT for its affirmative action program. In an attempt to preserve diversity gains, the Texas Legislature passed the “10 percent rule,” which required public universities in the state to admit students from the top 10 percent of the graduating class of every Texas high school. The idea was that ethnic diversity can be achieved without explicitly considering the race factor.
But, in 2003, after the Supreme Court gave public colleges and universities the green light to take race into account as a factor in admissions, the University of Texas revised its policies accordingly to admit students who didn’t make it into the top 10 percent.
This is the policy now being challenged. Abigail Fisher and Rachel Michalewicz, two white students who didn’t get into the University of Texas as undergraduates in 2008, claim that it was their race that kept them out, since minority students who they considered less qualified were admitted.
Were there no other white students admitted to the University of Texas that year? We can assume there were, and so the idea that it was the plaintiffs’ race that kept them out is questionable.
Even so, commentators who follow the Supreme Court closely are predicting that the case will deliver a death blow to affirmative action for public colleges and universities. There are at least five justices who will probably oppose racial preferences, including Alito. Meanwhile, the dissenters are likely to include Sotomayor. Don’t be surprised if her dissent in this case will contain a tone that is unmistakably personal.
Maybe Sotomayor will reflect on Thurgood Marshall’s dissent in the landmark 1978 Supreme Court case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which also involved a challenge to race-based admissions.
In that case, a majority of the justices agreed that Allan Bakke, a 32-year-old white male, should have been admitted to the University of California Davis Medical School. Bakke had been denied admission, he claimed, because of a special program that set aside for African-Americans 16 of the 100 seats in the entering class. Marshall — who was the only African-American justice on the Court and probably the only one who ever experienced racial discrimination firsthand — did not agree that Bakke should have been admitted, and he wrote a powerful dissent that none of his white colleagues could have written.
It is at moments like this — when more women and minorities are in places of power and influence — that we see the payoff of affirmative action and other efforts to expand educational and professional opportunities for all Americans. We’re all human. We view controversial issues with our heart, as much as with our head. We see them through a lens shaped by personal experiences.
As a Mexican-American graduate of an Ivy League university, here is what my lens tells me. Part of what Alito and the other Princeton alumni were really concerned about was that — if something wasn’t done to keep women and minorities out of prestigious colleges and universities — one day, white males may have to deal with them as equals. Watch how Sotomayor handles this case about affirmative action, and you’ll see: That day is here.
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The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Ruben Navarrette Jr.
Story By: by Ari Shapiro
Now that Super Tuesday is over, Mitt Romney’s campaign is bracing for some tough states ahead. Kansas, Alabama and Mississippi are places where Romney may not do well. Until now, his aides focused mostly on Romney’s electability against President Obama. Now they’re making the case that nobody else can even get through the nominating process.
WASHINGTON |
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States and eight other countries helping to develop the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter underscored their full and continued support for the program, according to two sources who attended a gathering hosted by Canada.
Despite U.S. plans to put off orders for 179 planes over the next five years and a steady drip of news about technical problems and developmental issues, a statement issued by Canada on Friday cited “good progress” on the program.
Julian Fantino, Canada’s associate minister of National Defence, hosted a dinner on Thursday and all-day meeting at his country’s embassy in Washington, D.C. on Friday to facilitate better communication among political officials from all nine partner countries.
“While good progress continues to be made, we will always be vigilant with our stewardship of taxpayers’ hard earned dollars,” he said in a statement, underscoring Canada’s determination to stick to its budget for replacing its aging fleet of F-18 fighter jets.
He said the program had already resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts for Canadian firms.
The two sources said all nine countries underscored their full and continued support for what one described as the “backbone of allied defense in the free world”.
Lockheed Martin Corp is developing three variants of the radar-evading, supersonic fighter jet for the United States and eight countries — Canada, Britain, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Norway, Italy and the Netherlands.
Senior U.S. officials sought to reassure the partner countries that Washington remains committed to the multinational fighter development program.
The slowdown in U.S. orders and budget pressures at home have prompted some of the international partners to rethink their own orders. Italy last month cut its planned buy of 131 planes by 30 percent.
“Our support of this program is clear,” said Pentagon spokeswoman Lieutenant Colonel Melinda Morgan.
Navy Vice Admiral David Venlet, the official who manages the Pentagon’s costliest weapons program, and acting acquisition chief Frank Kendall gave updates about development milestones and testing of the new warplane at the meeting, as did officials from Lockheed.
Fantino organized the meeting to facilitate greater collaboration among political officials from the nine countries funding the plane’s development — the first time so many countries have worked together to design and build a new plane.
In the past, the Pentagon has provided updates to senior leaders from the partner countries only on a bilateral basis. But military officials from the nine countries already meet twice a year for review sessions. The next military-level meeting is slated to take place March 14-15 in Australia.
Joe DellaVedova, spokesman for the F-35 program office, said the partner countries agreed to have their political officials make the meeting an annual event.
“The multinational Joint Strike Fighter Program represents a new model for international cooperation,” the Canadian statement said, adding that the partners agreed that “multilateral updates add purpose over bilateral discussions and updates.”
Fantino, a member of Canada’s Conservative-led government, is under pressure from the NDP opposition party to hold an open and transparent competition for the new warplanes before making firm commitments to buy 65 of the new F-35 fighter jets.
“The Conservatives shouldn’t be giving a blank cheque to Lockheed Martin before they know the real costs of the F-35s,” Matthew Kellway, a member of Canada’s parliament and frequent critic of the program, said in a statement.
(Reporting By Andrea Shalal-Esa; Additional reporting by Randall Palmer and David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)
Story By: Tell Me More
Host Michel Martin speaks with White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett about President Obama’s State of the Union speech. Jarrett discusses job loss and growth, and says America is moving in the right direction when it comes to combating unemployment.